Answering your question in this format is quite challenging.
On the other hand you ask about navigation and then about current $state acting all weird.
For the first I'd say it's too broad question and for the second I'd say... well, you are doing something wrong or missing the obvious :)
Take the following controller:
app.controller('MainCtrl', function($scope, $state) {
$scope.state = $state;
});
Where app is configured as:
app.config(function($stateProvider) {
$stateProvider
.state('main', {
url: '/main',
templateUrl: 'main.html',
controller: 'MainCtrl'
})
.state('main.thiscontent', {
url: '/thiscontent',
templateUrl: 'this.html',
controller: 'ThisCtrl'
})
.state('main.thatcontent', {
url: '/thatcontent',
templateUrl: 'that.html'
});
});
Then simple HTML template having
<div>
{{ state | json }}
</div>
Would "print out" e.g. the following
{
"params": {},
"current": {
"url": "/thatcontent",
"templateUrl": "that.html",
"name": "main.thatcontent"
},
"transition": null
}
I put up a small example showing this, using ui.router and pascalprecht.translate for the menus. I hope you find it useful and figure out what is it you are doing wrong.
Plunker here http://plnkr.co/edit/XIW4ZE
Screencap
